


Vanguard

by JoAsakura



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-26
Updated: 2012-10-06
Packaged: 2017-11-15 01:46:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/521817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoAsakura/pseuds/JoAsakura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In modern New York, "consulting biotic" vanguard John Shepard faces the worst monsters from the dark reaches of the city.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> dresden files-ish >.>;

They always noticed him pushing through the lunchtime crowds, Shepard thought as he hunched down into his black leather trenchcoat, worn smooth and glossy by years of use. 

Or they would’ve, if not for that very coat.

It wasn’t the people he was worried about. The goggling tourists in their american flag sweatshirts and their shiny red Macy’s bags jostling through Times Square, or the homeless with those same sweatshirts and bags, filthy, tattered and faded. Business people jostling at the gyro cart or the cable guy in his bucket, looking down as he worked on the lines.

Some of them noticed him, as well. At 6'2", John Shepard was tall but not exceptionally so. Nor was he overly broad. Handsome, but his face always half-hidden behind sunglasses, even in the overcast gloom. But they moved aside for him anyways, some primal prickle of "not right" crawling up their spines as he pushed past. Buildings rose up, vanishing into the fog high above, giving New York the feeling of a half-finished video game.

No, he didn't care if the humans noticed him.

It was the *other* inhabitants of his city that he worried about. The keepers. The collectors. The ravagers scuttling in the sewers and abandoned subway lines. The things that lurked in the dark, rotten core of the Big Apple.

Despite what it might have said on his business cards, John Shepard wasn't a detective, not in the normal sense of the term. He didn't spy on cheating spouses or track down deadbeat dads. In another time, another place, he might have been called a wizard. But the word these days was "biotically enhanced parahuman" or simply "biotic".

Shepard? He just preferred one simple word.

Vanguard.

~~

He hated midtown with a passion normally reserved for bedbugs and they mayor's recent ban on buying large, sugary sodas to feed his hyperactive metabolism. 

But the signs had been clear. With the rains that had pelted the city a few days before, something had come up from the bowels of the city, and it was lurking somewhere nearby. 

The last time a creature had made him chase it down, it had led him through the twilight streets down onto the northbound 1/2/3 track, where he'd almost been pancaked by a subway train. If it hadn't been for a well timed Charge, phasing himself and the gibbering Cannibal through the cars, he would have been dead. He'd wrapped things up by pancaking the creature against a platform wall between a guy playing "Bohemian Rhapsody" on a steel drum and a family of five from Duluth.

He hadn't enjoyed explaining THAT one to Vakarian.

But this one was different. This one was out in the daylight, above ground.

He paused on the sidewalk, forcing the flow of foot traffic around him, feeling the crawl of life energy around him. The tourists. The businesspeople. The guys at the gyro cart and the one selling knockoff fendi bags below the cable truck.

Where the installer sat high above watching the flow of life pass below him.

Shepard's gaze flicked upwards. Beneath the Optimus Online hardhat was the greasy grey skin of scion. It hadn't noticed him yet, the shielding he'd built into that old leather coat holding.

It was too crowded to use any of his major powers. No shockwave. Nova. Nothing he could use to end the fight quickly and violently.

With a curse, Shepard dragged his fingers down one arm of the coat. There was a flicker of light in the wake of the motion. Red as blood. White as steel. The barrier built into the leather dropping.

He was going to have to get the scion to chase him or run. Either way, he was going to have to get him out of there, and it wasn't going to be easy.


	2. Chapter 2

You wouldn't find N7 Services in any directory, the website was a vaguely worded mess about odd jobs and "special requests", and the the sign shared real estate with the deli on the first floor and the nail salon on the third.

It was almost as if Shepard didn't care if anyone found him.

They did anyways, with alarming regularity. Weird skulls in amber, artefacts in lost languages, books that made no sense to anyone but their rightful readers - Shepard was the man to find them.

At the moment, though, he was just the man shambling into a second floor office, bits of goo dripping off his trenchcoat. The scion had decided to fight, rather than flee, and he was going to have a hard time explaining why he was an expensing a gyro truck to Vakarian at the NYPD.

"You're late and you smell like poop." Tali said from behind her desk as Shepard peeled off his coat. "And if you hang it on the rack next to your suit, I will end you, Shepard." She added as he paused in mid-hang.

"You look like you have a date." Shepard replied, putting his coat over a nearby chair. "And you most definitely don't smell like 'poop', Ms. Zorah." He waggled his eyebrows unconvincingly.

Tali adjusted her cat-eyed glasses and gave the purple silk headscarf a tug. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"The purple with the gold thread is something you reserve for special occasions, Tali." Shepard singsonged as he ducked into the bathroom. Then, he poked his head back out. "I *am* a detective you know. Is it with that marine your parents like or our... mutual friend in the NYPD?"

"You're a crazy man who finds crazy things and fights crazy monsters in the dark, Shepard." Tali sniffed. "And it's none of your business."

"And you, my friend, are the best assistant a crazy man could have." Shepard said. "Why IS my suit out there?" He ran a wet hand through his unruly hair and stared at the face in the mirror. In the lousy light, he could barely see the lattice of scars curling around his face. "By the way, I won today, in case you were wondering."

"You have a potential client coming in at five, a Doctor Liara T'soni? I thought it might be nice for you to look like the professional we both know you are, Shepard." She paused, tapping gold-flecked purple nails on the desk. "You also got a couple of calls. One was from Anderson. He wants you to check in with the Citadel more often."

Shepard turned the water off as Tali handed him his suit without looking at him. "...and the other?" He asked, dreading the answer. 

"Kai.. Major Alenko called. He...." Tali leaned on the wall. "He said he just wanted you to know that Jack Harper escaped custody." She fidgeted with the edge of her veil. "I'm sorry, John."

Shepard ran his fingers over the scars. 

Not every day could be a winner.


	3. Chapter 3

The suit was the colour of storm clouds, shot through with paler chalkline stripes. Black shirt and a tie that fell somewhere between the two. It was tailored to make broad shoulders broader, and a narrow waist even more.

It was not anything he would have ever bought for himself, and he tried very hard not to remember what Kaidan's hands felt like on him, smoothing his lapels. Stroking the back of his hand against the scruff on Shepard's jaw.

He straightened his tie and looked at himself in the mirror. The nearly phosphorescent blue eyes that stared back were vaguely bloodshot. He sighed and pushed his sunglasses up his nose as the door chime jingled.

"Showtime."

Doctor Liara T'soni was small and curvaceous, pale blue-white skin like a porcelain doll's and hair so blond it was almost silver. Faint freckles speckled her cheeks. The tiny woman was swamped in an expensive white coat, and the whole affair only made the enormous, battered paper bag clutched in her arms all the more suspicious.

"Doctor T'soni?" Shepard extended a hand as he closed the bathroom door behind him. 

She pushed past him into the office. "Mr. Shepard, I'm so glad you're able to help me. " She said quickly. "Your assistant was very clear on the phone about your abilities and.."

Shepard looked at his extended hand, then dropped it with a sigh. He glanced back at Tali, who shrugged apologetically. "Doctor, I don't actually even know what your problem is, let alone having agreed to... assist you." He followed her into his office as she set the paper bag down on the table with a thunk.

"I.. have heard your name in certain... circles that you are a man who gets things accomplished, Mister Shepard." She said said with a little frown. "Your assistant was very clear about your abilities and.." the doctor paused as Shepard went to peek in the bag. She slapped his hand. "and I did not say you could look in there!"

Shepard rubbed a scar on his cheek. It ached with the annoyance that simmered under his skin. "Why don't we start from the beginning?" He said with a forced little smile.

She blinked. "Yes. Sorry. I'm in a bit of a pickle, Mister Shepard." She perched on the edge of the seat. "I'm a professor of archaeology at Columbia. And.. " She looked at the bag and took a deep breath. "And I have found something that could rewrite this history of the world as we know it. And.. I think someone is trying to kill me because of it."

"... may I look in the bag now, Doctor?" Shepard asked, and she nodded.

It was a statuette, a grotesque thing that looked like it was fresh out of a lovecraft novel. It stank like power and Shepard wanted to be anywhere than where he was at the moment. And it was singing.

"I've been studying legends of an ancient race, who came here 50,000 years ago and changed the course of humanity." She was saying, but Shepard couldn't hear her over the sound of the power.

It was like he was ten years old again, starving and filthy and Anderson was picking him up off the streets of New York and sweeping him off to the wonders of the Citadel.

Without thinking, he touched the statue, and then with a burst of light that slammed into his forebrain like a crowbar, Shepard didn't hear anything at all.


End file.
